Homesickness
by MelissaeWrites
Summary: Winter is a time for sickness in children, and Jack can't stand to watch them suffer. (gen, jack/bunny preslash if you squint)


A/N: My ficlet for day 3 of Jackrabbit Week, "Healing".

* * *

There were a lot of things Jack didn't know about himself. He didn't know where he'd come from, or who he was. He didn't know why the Moon had put him on this earth, nor did he understand how he fit into it. The one thing he did know, though, the one thing he was almost sure of was that he had never felt this helpless.

There was a girl lying in bed, bundled up in old quilts, panting and kicking at them even as her mother tucked them around her more firmly. She was sick, Jack knew, though he didn't know from what. Other children had been sick in the village, too, lately, but none as bad as this. None of the others had been flushed quite so thoroughly, and none of the others had eyes quite so fever-bright. None of the others had parents who were exchanging glances more and more sorrowfully.

Maybe that was why this one felt special.

After her parents left the room, Jack hovered next to her bed. He knew she couldn't see him, but surely that didn't mean that he couldn't help. He laid a hand across her forehead like he'd seen her mother do, and tried not to flinch back at the heat beneath his palm. The girl stirred below him, pressing up into his touch, lips moving soundlessly as she sought out more of his cooling influence.

A grim little smile twisted at his lips. Yes, surely he could do something.

He stayed with her that night, stroking her brow with cool hands and blowing her hair back from her sweat-soaked forehead. He knew not to make it too cold, kept the spirals and ferns inside for once in favor of a gentle chill that she seemed to respond well to. She even seemed to be responding when he talked to her, even though he knew that couldn't possibly be true, so talk he did. He told her stories about some pixies he'd had a run-in with the other day, and the faces they'd pulled at him when he'd blown them into a tree. He told her jokes (even if she never laughed at the punchline), and made noises about how lovely, how familiar her home seemed. Lowly, in a voice that was unsure for all that it could not be heard, he sang songs to her that he could not remember learning, but that he knew as well as he knew his own name.

By the time the morning came, her body seemed to be regulating her temperature better all on its own. She was sleeping soundly when her mother came back, but when Jack moved away to make room for her mother to sit on the bed, her eyes flicked open. "Mama?"

Her mother leaned forward and pressed her lips to her daughter's forehead, and all her breath seemed to leave her body at once when she felt the temperature there. "Oh, thanks be."

The girl ignored that, starting to struggle again against her blankets. "Mama, where did he go?"

"Where did who go, love?" her mother asked, stroking her hair back from her forehead.

"Jack. It was Jack."

Her mother stiffened and Jack paused on his way to the door. What?

"Mama, he was here, I promise. He was _here_."

Jack floated closer to the girl, almost unable to believe his ears. "You can see me? You _know_ me?" he asked.

But neither the girl nor her mother acknowledged his presence. The girl just looked at her mother with stubborn eyes, and her mother looked very much as if she'd just seen a ghost. And even though he knew that it couldn't have been true, that it was never true, Jack couldn't help the way he could feel something shrivel up inside him.

Finally, the girl's mother said slowly, hesitantly, "Jack isn't here, darling. He hasn't been here in a long time." She looked at her daughter with something a little like fear, and Jack realized with a start that she probably feared that the fever had done something to her.

The girl shook her head impatiently. "I know that. I know that Jack's... gone. But last night he was here with me, I know it. He—" she broke off, gesturing slowly, sluggishly towards her own head. "He sang to me."

Her mother's mouth was set into a firm line, broken only when she bit at her lower lip. "Fevers bring dreams, love. You know that."

"I..." The fight seemed to go out of her then, though whether it was because of resignation or exhaustion, Jack wasn't sure.

Her mother sighed and stroked her fingers down her daughter's cheek. "Go back to sleep, dear. You must be exhausted," she murmured, voice as tender as her eyes were worried.

The girl obediently slipped back down under the quilts. "Yes, mama."

Her mother left the room then, and Jack could hear words filtering in as she went to speak to the girl's father. He could hear things like "the fever has broken" and "fever dreams" and "visions", and even, in a very low voice, "spirits". He did not hear "Jack".

His attention was pulled back to the girl in bed when she coughed somewhat pitifully and looked up at the ceiling. "I know you were here, Jack. I know it," she whispered, voice fierce in her tiny body.

"Yeah," he whispered back, crossing the room to hover next to her bed even as he knew that she would probably never see him again. "I always will be."

* * *

"Hey there, Soph," Jack murmured, leaning over the little girl to place his palm on her burning forehead. "Looks like you've got the flu. That's no fun, is it?"

Sophie moaned and turned her head into his touch. Then, without warning, she curled up around his arm and hung on tight like a baby sloth to a branch.

"Hey!" he shook his arm slightly. "I need that back!" This had never been a problem before they could see him.

"Got a good, firm grip, that one does," Bunny drawled from behind him, and if Sophie hadn't been pinning him down, Jack probably would have jumped a mile.

"Bunny! Jeez! Way to give a guy a heart attack!"

Bunny just smirked at him as he sidled up closer and leaned in so he could gently detach Sophie from her new toy. "Shh, Jack. Don't want to disturb the patient."

Jack glared at him even as he took a seat on the side of Sophie's bed. "What are you doing here, anyway?" And if his voice was a lot quieter, that was of his own volition, thank you.

"Same as you, I suspect," Bunny said, turning his attention to Sophie. "Heard our little hellion was sick, thought I'd check in on her."

Jack couldn't help but smile down at her. "Yeah. She'll be fine, though." He tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear. "I've seen worse than this."

"Have you, then?" Bunny asked, tone only faintly mocking, and mostly in what Jack had come to recognize as a joking way. He came to stand next to the bed, and gave Sophie a considering look. "Didn't realize that Jack Frost had much experience playing nursemaid."

"Oh, you'd be surprised. I've been doing this circuit for a long time," Jack said, and he kept his gaze down on Sophie so Bunny couldn't see the faraway look he was almost sure was in his eyes.

"That so, Jack?" Damn. Hadn't fooled him one little bit. That rabbit could be sharp when he wanted to be.

Jack pulled his eyes up so they could meet Bunny's. "Yep," he said, trying for light and mostly just achieving brittle. "Lots of kids get sick in winter."

Bunny looked pointedly down at the way Sophie was pushing her head over to where Jack was sitting.

"—and I'm pretty good at keeping down a bad fever," Jack said, sheepish for reasons he couldn't quite pin down.

"Hmm. I did notice that children 'round these parts tend to be pretty spry. That your doing, Frost?" Bunny asked, leaning back against Sophie's wall in a way that was just a little too calculated to be casual.

Jack made an indignant little sound. "I don't just do it here! I've taken care of kids all over the world for almost three hundred years!" he protested. But then Sophie sighed the tiniest sigh and he became aware of just how tenderly he was looking at her. He was sure that Bunny could see it, too. "But... Burgess is special," he finally allowed. "I grew up here, after all." In more ways than one.

He glanced over at Bunny just in time to see great furry eyebrows lift. "Pardon?"

Jack shrugged, and ran his fingers over Sophie's blanket distractedly. "I used to live here, back before I died. It was just a little village then, though."

Bunny inhaled sharply, but Jack ignored that. "Before—"

"Yeah. It was a long time ago." Jack paused. "I didn't know who I was back then, or where I was, even. But I knew all those kids while I was alive. They were my friends." His family. "I didn't know that then, but I knew I wanted to protect them."

Bunny was quiet for a long time, watching him sidelong through curiously bright eyes. "Seems to me that you've done a pretty good job of that. Three hundred years and you're still on watch?"

"Every year." There had been... losses. There would always be losses. But Jack Frost had not let one year go by without easing the children of Burgess through every epidemic, every outbreak, every seasonal cold. He didn't intend to start now just because he was a Guardian.

Bunny continued to watch him, pensive, for a few more minutes before finally, "I owe you an apology, Jack."

That did get Jack's attention. "For what?"

Bunny pulled away from the wall then, came down to sit by his side on the very edge of Sophie's bed. He was large enough that it was a precarious sort of balance, but Jack, for once, didn't give him shit about it. "I misjudged you. Thought you were just a silly little wanker who didn't give half a toss about children," he said, and his ears quivered with something that Jack could have sworn was embarrassment.

Jack swallowed. "Look..." he started, but Bunny cut him off.

"I know that's not true now. But back then, I saw all the pranks and the silly buggers and thought that was all there was to you. But it's not, is it? You're not just laughing at the world. You've been looking for someone to laugh with you," Bunny said.

That... Jack could remember every single time a child had walked through him. He closed his eyes against those memories then, only to be confronted with that little girl, _his little sister,_ who had looked right through him except for the one time it had mattered most.

He didn't realize he was crying until he felt Bunny's paw pat his hand. "No, it's okay. It's just—for so long, none of them could see me. None of them. The only time someone actually did, it was when..."

He couldn't see Bunny's face, but he could hear the understanding in Bunny's answering "ah".

"This was a way I could connect with them, just for a little while. They couldn't see me, but I could still help them. And maybe one day..."

"Maybe one day we'd all know exactly what you'd been doing for them," Bunny finished.

Jack laughed, and tried not to think about how choked it sounded. "Something like that."

"You know," Bunny continued conversationally, "Easter is all about new life."

Jack nodded. Of course he knew that. How could he forget?

"New life goes hand-in-hand with healing."

At that, Jack opened up his eyes and looked up at Bunny. Where exactly was he going with this?

Bunny gave a half-shrug. "I can't heal the world, Jack. Only wake it up again when it's been sleeping. But I do have the power to make lives a little stronger, a little more well. With a little bit of caretaking, it's enough for the little hurts," he said, and as Jack looked on, Bunny ran a paw down through Sophie's hair. She shuddered as a certain kind of half-light followed its path. "You've been taking care of the caretaking for me, haven't you?"

Jack, throat too tight to adequately respond, just nodded.

"But," Bunny said, turning his attention back to Jack, "No one's been taking care of you, have they?"

Jack's forehead creased in confusion. "I—"

Bunny just snorted softly, the way he always did when Jack said something stupid. Then, carefully so as not to disturb their young charge, Bunny pulled him in so he could rest Jack's head against his chest. "Thank you, Jack. You've been doing good work here. If we'd come down to visit with the children a little more often, maybe we would have seen that for ourselves."

And maybe the old kangaroo was right. Maybe he did have a certain kind of healing to him, and maybe Jack did, too. Because as he sat there next to a little girl he'd come to love as family, with a face buried in soft, warm fur, he could start to feel something inside him that he hadn't even known was broken starting to heal.


End file.
